-The Song of Beren and Luthien by J.R.R Tolkien

I can't believe I didn't consider using one of those "ai paints you a picture of x" sites to save me a lot of time for researching lolita.

If you're doing things where you're incorporating unconventional things into lolita fashion, it's helpful to do a little bit of research about what people who don't know lolita fashion think the trend is. For example, if I'm doing Zelda-themed lolita, it's necessary to know what Zelda is, and what lolita fashion is. However, to make it read as Zelda to lolitas and as lolita to Zelda people, it's also very helpful to know what people who like Zelda think lolita is, and what people who like EGL fashion think Zelda is.

So I've been making mood boards about this for a long time, and it wasn't until today when I realized that AI Paints You A Pic sites can get you some really good ideas of what the general internet that feeds the AI thinks both trends would look like together.

CW: AI-painted faces.

I know some people find them terrifying, myself included, so they're under the jump.

So these nine pictures show some really interesting starting points about how certain trends are expected to be represented. You obviously have to tailor everything through the lens of lolita fashion, and to add details into the gray areas for how to include Zelda concepts, but it's some pretty cool ideas as far as quick sketches go.

Here's the last time I talked about Zelda-themed lolita.

Anyway, I'm super excited about this and so I'm sharing it with you. I'll probably work this concept into something in the coming days, but I was too excited about this discovery to not share it right away.

Here's another one that I found really interesting. The main difficulty of doing punk lolita is that punk fashion doesn't think punk lolita is punk, and lolita often doesn't think punk lolita is lolita, so it's existing in a very small overlap on the Venn diagram. You just have to say no one will like it, and wear it anyway, because you like it.

Which is pretty punk, when you think about it.

But if you're working on punk lolita and want to help with figuring out what themes and details might work, this deviates from existing punk lolita standards but still kind of reads as punk fashion and as lolita, so it's a good inspiration to have when looking the trend up elsewhere.

Anyway, go have fun making terrifying faces with robots.

Here's the Ai I was using.

Now it's time to try to get some sleep.

LMAO I’m so sorry I lured you in with my weird and then OH GOD SHES SPICY?!?! 😭😹🫶🏼💀🖤 bahahaha omggg I wonder how many others I’ve tricked accidentally. I PROMISE IM WEIRD ABOVE ALL 🙏🏼😭😹

Anywho!!! Hi hi hi!

I’m sorry I’ve been so few n far between, studying (and palworld……oops) has been getting the best of me recently! I hope you’re doing well my dear friend!

I’m getting ready this week to go see The Prize Fighter Inferno, Claudio Sanchez of Coheed and Cambria and his wife’s side project; they’re something special. Very different. Electronic lullaby vibes. I feel like you may like them, so here’s a couple suggestions!

-Death Rattle.

-Virtual Pioneers.

-Run, Gunner Recall, Run! The Town Wants You Dead!

-Roll For Initiative.

-She’s The Brains, My Sweetheart.

Ahhh I hope you enjoy them!!! Iloveyouuuuu!!!

🖤 @a-little-lynx

Hihi Cass!!

Thank you for the music recs, I put a few on while I was doing dishes, I did really enjoy it! I’ll have to give them more of a listen sometime. (A few of the songs reminded me kinda of Half-Moon Run? In a way… something about how the words are sang, haha.) I Really liked Death Rattle, and I hope you have a lot of fun at the concert!!!

Never worry about being busy please!! You’re all good. How has Palword been treating you, haha. I watched a streamer play it a little bit, but I don’t have anything to play it on right now lol.

I’ve been, ok… I figured out my increase in migraines was cause I was binge playing video games on the weekends like when I was a teenager. And I need less screen time in my life now. Which sucks cause I’ve been really enjoying Hollow Knight. And I feel like limiting the play time will be really hard for that game haha.

Other then that not a lot has been going on for me? Mostly hobby stuff really. Been reading more, im finally in the mood to knit again, so I started a new project today, and it’s a sweater which will mostly be in the round which is good, cause I can read on my kindle and knit at the same time that way😂.

I don’t know if you’ll enjoy them, but I found this band on Saturday and I’ve been listening to their EP a lot. It's kinda. I don't know it's hard to describe. It's jazz? electronic, jazz. with 70s vibes. and reminds me of Legend of Zelda somehow, haha. The band also wears sparkly jewl masks, and a mask is always a plus to me!!

I've also been listening to a lot of pop? I've been putting Troye Sivan on repeat again, oof. Idk why his stuff reminds me of Midwest winters.

Friend, "ask me about ot3s I'll never go away"? I'm asking about ot3s 👀

hi! lol we would literally be here all day if i listed every single ot3 of mine and i'm sure there's plenty that wouldn't interest you if they're from fandoms you don't follow, but i'm gonna speak generally with a few examples: ot3s are great because I'm a multishipper and I love threesomes (and the occasional foursome/moresome) lol what can I say. Unless something is a squick for me I can usually find some way to make it square in my head. And I like gay stuff, so an MF is usually further enhanced for me by making it MFF or MMF (although i also like MMM and FFF). Sometimes there's also the appeal of just... weird or inconvenient sex. It's funny, it's experimental, where else can you get this kind of content. i love the vibe between Inu/Kag/Miroku in the early days of Inuyasha before Sango is introduced. i like Miro/Sango too but like, those three clowns might've hooked up pre-Sango days. and i often genuinely can't choose between one ship and another, or i don't want to write out a ship so that i can include another one. i like Ed/Ling from fma but i also love Winry and it's not out of this world to me that she'd be down for a threesome lol. (Actually the problem would be Ed... but I think he could be convinced.) For the other het ships i listed... Bat/Wonder Woman... like why not complete the trifecta and have SuperWonderBat? They are iconic for a reason and they're fun together. Actually this just works really well in general for American comics that have been so long-running each character has a multitude of possible ships, and probably some homoerotic tension with someone at some point? Other times i'm literally not interested unless it's an ot3, like something is missing without it? Tbh this tends to happen with underdeveloped het ships, when there's a rival/bff/villain character right there with whom the hero has plenty of development, but the creator also hasn't totally neglected the canon love interest (usually a female character who has been somewhat sidelined lol). That's your Sasu/Naru/Saku (Naruto), Inu/Kag/Koga (they teased Kag/Koga and I was kinda into it, but I need Inuyasha to also be there for me to get on board) and most of the canonical ships from the Final Fantasy canon. In general, if I'm supposed to be into a couple for ~aesthetic reasons~ or there is a ton of ship tease but no canonical confirmation, as with many rpgs of the 90s and 2000s, then I'm piling on all the aesthetics that appealed to me. If I'm feeling in the mood for something a bit more fucked up, fraught and ultimately doomed threesome is great: Link/Zelda/Ganondorf and Link/Midna/Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Anakin/Obi-Wan/Padme (Star Wars), Jean/Scott/Logan (X-Men) and Shinji/Kaworu/Asuka... even throw Rei in there, whatever (NGE). Finally there are ships for whom it just Makes Sense. Finn/Rey/Poe (Star Wars), Haruka/Michiru/Setsuna (Sailor Moon), Watanuki/Doumeki/Himawari (xxxHolic) just to name a few. Or ships featuring two people who are super horny and flirty in general that I can easily see adding a third (or fourth or many), which describes almost all the horny situations I'm submitting my main fandom (MASH) darlings to inside my brain and sometimes on paper. ftr there are ships for whom I think it truly doesn't work and if it's me saying that then trust me, I've tried. there's a good amount of ships I enjoy without it too, but i think i'm probably in the minority in that whenever i get into a fandom i'm holding three or more swatches up at time trying to figure out what can work.

supernatural s13e6 tombstone (w. davy perez)

SAM No. You're – you're dead. CASTIEL Yeah, I was. But then I… annoyed an ancient cosmic being so much that he sent me back.

i mean. that's how i described it too. but laughing that we're seriously gonna say that in this moment without the boys reacting, lol okay!

please not this music, it's making me laugh. papa castiel is home! cue the cheesiest fucking emotional music. you know what it reminds me of? the zelda breath of the wild like... those flashback cut scenes, the memories? mushy ones with zelda haha (plinky piano bits around 19:19 if you're curious)

cas hitting the hug jackpot, 3 unsolicted ones! and the one with jack was sweet

whew and now we get cheesy old west music too.

DEAN Yeah, we've done more on less. Besides Dodge City's kind of, uh, kind of awesome. All right, well… two salty hunters, one half-angel kid, and a dude who just came back from the dead. Again. Team Free Will 2.0. Here we go.

no more suicidal dean apparently, get an unexpected resurrection and cowboy shenanigans and he's happy and fired up

one thing i find endlessly amusing/fascinating is how like, all these years we're gonna have silly little logistical questions like. how they clean their suits, are they doing dry cleaning, are they rolling up their suits in their duffels with everything else, etc etc. but we got to see some ironing not long back and now, dry cleaning bags!

cas's face is cracking me up

JACK He really likes cowboys. CASTIEL Yes. Yes, he does.

also my face at the creative team that decided this was part of dean's schtick. i want to let dean enjoy silly things. but they just push so hard

also they're gonna get one room (albeit a suite) for all 4 of them. jack doesn't sleep much, cas doesn't sleep at all. what are those two gonna do while the humans are sleeping? awkward

SAM You're in a good mood, huh? DEAN Yeah. And? SAM Nothing. No, no, I-I-I just, uh… you've been having a rough go, so it's… it's good to see you smile. DEAN Well, I said I needed a big win. We got Cas back. That's a pretty damn big win. SAM Yeah. Fair enough.

what's up with your attitude there, sam. you don't actually seem very happy. worried he's gonna crash and burn? jealous that it's cas? jealous that cas is taking jack from him? (lol)

little bonding for cas and jack while the humans were sleeping talking about his mom was nice

untitled 1 and 2 our old friends!! last seen i think in one episode in 10x10 and not quite some time before that. if my blog search/index wasn't so fucked i could find more details. song remains the same

set designers let the kitsch explode. those silhouettes

CASTIEL I told you. He's an angry sleeper. Like a bear.

cheesy but i laughed. i, too, wake up in a foul mood and should not be talked to

oh sure dean, you're cringing over cas's line but we've all been very generous in accepting your goofy ass shit like that bolo tie and need to cosplay tombstone to begin with

can truly appreciate the sheer awfulness of that hat cas is wearing out in the sunlight. it's so small, it's so translucent. cheapest of straw hats. (not knockin straw hats! my dad was an avid cowboy hat wearer and had a couple nice straw ones for the summer)

i don't pay too much attention to how time flows on this show, i do know sometimes it can be weeks between episodes, sometimes it's the next day (another thing that irked me on teen wolf was how they spent like... 2+ full seasons in one year to keep the kids in high school). but anyway, i just wonder how much show universe time cas was not off on some whatever, and around to do this stuff hanging out with them. them crammed in sam's room on his uncomfortable bed to watch a movie, like they did with charlie? lol. based on the number of times i've seen it in fic, i gather a bunker room with a tv does become a thing at some point, so maybe it was in there?

.... a shootout in the parking lot of the knockoff wells fargo in broad daylight. what planet are we on right now. so jack can accidentally kill a civilian with his powers, great

CASTIEL Jack, I've killed people who didn't deserve it… my friends– I've killed people I loved. I wish I could tell you that it– that it gets easier, that with time, it hurts less, but that would be a lie because it– it never gets easier. And those moments, they never stop hurting. But that doesn't mean that you should stop fighting. Doesn't mean that just because you made a mistake – and that's what this is, Jack. It's a mistake. That doesn't mean that you can't– can't be better, do better. I believe that. I have to believe that.

so the people he killed that he loved, would that be like. angelic siblings? wonder if the wiki keeps track of who killed whom. he killed a bunch of fake deans in that one episode lol

SAM And we still believe in you, Jack. We, uh– JACK Stop. Just… Please stop.

anyway, point being, wasn't this just an accident?? like when eileen accidentally killed the bmol dude? eileen got a hug and commiseration, they're talking about who they murdered and WE STILL BELIEVE YOU'RE NOT EVIL i would tell them to stop too!

why do they do this with him

JACK No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster. DEAN No, you're not. I thought you were. I did. But… Like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters.

dean gets to have his little personal growth acknowledgement

really added dimension to the terror of thinking he's a monster like sam did, with a bunch of unintended injury and now death wrapped up in it. kind of hard to... care about anything except vaguely because we sitll barely know him but if i sit and think about it, sure

and a whole other thing dealing with kid having a meltdown when they can just teleport away.

oh god just considered now dean might feel extra guilty for telling jack he was a monster and he was gonna kill him, now that jack ran away. that could be the crash and burn :p

ok, i'm shifting into zelda mode. i have until friday to finally beat this sucker which i think has actually wound up being a good thing - i was playing less and less of it and less and less often, partly because of time, partly because of brain chemistry, but mostly because i was getting tired of the like. grind. koroks shrines lightroots etc. i don't really want to burn out on totk, so i think if i stop and play pikmin, it will be a nice little break and motivate me to come back to zelda and actually enjoy it instead of just. going through the motions. which is great because i do enjoy this game and i want to remember that i enjoy this game, and also it means i have more of it to enjoy later - at WORST, i will come back for 100% when the inevitable dlc comes out. map fatigue of doing botw twice (nearly 100%ing it the first time, doing it all the way the second time) has been my biggest problem with totk, and it's possible that i will never play either game again (or if i do it will be a very, very, very, VERY long time from now, like at least a decade), so ultimately i'm not mad about stretching it out to make it last longer than just one summer. it's going to be a REALLY long time before we get another zelda. as in, i could very well be in my 40s by then. might as well shorten the wait if i can

anyway the first order of business is to go back and finish the mineru quest. i wanna enjoy actually having her in my party for awhile before i take her to the final boss fight - i should have done it ages ago lol

oh yeah i quit bc of a hinox lol but he was super easy

deeply unfortunate: found several enormous piles of minable rock. which i felt compelled to break all of even though it wasn't fun. the good new is one of them was made of zonaite somaybe soon i can upgrade my battery again

another giant pile of zonaite. im thrilled to have the mats but like...please let me do something else now lol. even mineru's arms have durability. i need my weapons. i've used like 40 bombs. i can't do this with yunobo over and over

also love and light to mineru but she is straight up in my way, and at this point in the game i can't dismiss her. like she wants to be close so she can kneel so i can piggyback and the mech is awesome when im in the mood for it but i am trying to do something. and she makes so many noises also. i think the sages, controlswise, are my least favorite gameplay element of this. they are SO. ANNOYING. i wish there was a limitation where only one could walk around with you at once and the rest were mapped to buttons lol

ok, got it mined. now to the actual spirit temple

aww i like the music here. i like the little lightroot piano cue. i wish i had an actual lightroot lol my hearts have been decimated

little bit worried about this boss.

oh shit i was exploring the arena and fell into the water while riding the mech and now i cant find her?! is she ok......................

oh whew there she is. rip i wanted to go get that big poe...i guess not. i'm sure after the fight i'll be teleported out and even if not it is so much swimming in the dark

oh SHIT evil construct?? DARK MINERU??? why can we have dark mineru but not dark link???

aaaah the old electrified fence arena

i wish i hadnt had to use a rocket to get in here. this fight feels slow and clunky without the benefit of a fan on mineru's back

FOUR ARMS?? OH SHIT WE GOT GENERAL GREIVOUS OVER HERE

GOT HIS ASS

oh my god it's MINERU like it was mineru but now she looks like a person and not a robot

oh god is she gonna give me a CUTSCENE?

like we just got one but am i gonna get another memory

THE

MURAAAAALLLLLLLL

this is breaking so much lore.

NOT THE HYRULE CASTLE THEME

oh a man of great evil here we go show me the boy it's been too long

SCREEEEAM THERE HE LITERALLY IS!!!!!!

oh my god the theme from that very first announcement trailer

THE SHOT FROM THE TRAILERS!!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT ZELDA USING RECALL BABYGIRL YOU ARE SO COOL

YOOOOOOOOO

rauru sealing ganondorf with the fma scar movement. he threw his whole body weight behind that fist 😏

this is gay

IM LOSING MY WHOLE ASS MIND. REMEMBER THIS NAME: LINK. AND THE MAIN THEME STARST PLAYING

AND AT THE BEGINNING. IN THE VERY FIRST CUTSCENE. I REMEMBER SCREAMING OUT LOUD BECAUSE HE RECOGNIZED US. HE REMEMBERED. THE NAME

holy shit. holy shit!!! they literally are just frozen like that just like in my movie pitch <3

ANOTHER cutscene?? i am literally eating

WAHHHH fi's theme

oh im wailing she and mineru love each other so much...neither of them wants to lose the other bc theyve already lost sonia and rauru :(

GOD ZELDA BEING WILLING TO DIE FOR LINK...girl they said you WONT be able to change back ik bc of spoilers that she does but AAAAAA

idk why all the zonai are so long and wiggly. like kaminoans. i don't like it

"even if my body should perish i will be with you in spirit" zelda about to lose mom #4 :(

oh NICE i have unlocked some cool zonaite shopping options...which i refuse to use until i max out my battery, lol

wow. i even got to get those poes

popped out of the spirit temple and was able to grab a lightroot. perfect stopping point bc now i have stuff i have to do lol

I can't bring myself to read ctb cus it sounds so thoroughly angsty but based off of what I've heard from following you the mental image of the chain showing up at Spirit's hyrule and him opening his door and seeing all of them, and then locking eyes with Warriors before slamming the door closed just popped into my head and I thought you'd like to hear about it

You're pretty close to the right idea, but I propose that Spirit would be 100 times pettier and more bitter than just slamming a door.

Unsurprisingly, I have had a few ideas of how a present day Warriors and the Chain meeting of Spirit would go, and I think the one I vibe with the most is this:

The Chain arrives in New Hyrule and Warriors realizes immediately that this can only go badly

So what he needs to do is get to Spirit before everyone else to do some damage control

Meanwhile Time realizes that Spirit can potentially reveal that Time has been lying by omission about being the child, so he needs to get to Spirit before everyone else to do some damage control

Both Time and Warriors have different ideas as to where Spirit could be and are both suspiciously amendable to splitting up the team to check different places

Time thinks he has the best idea and takes a train to where everyone says is the town where the Royal Engineer lives (which is not in Castle Town)

Warriors meanwhile remembers that Spirit was dating Zelda, and is 100% certain that Spirit is in Castle Town somewhere, if not the castle itself

Warriors's is correct; there seems to be some kind of ball happening at the castle tonight, which is a perfect event for the Royal Engineer and boyfriend of the princess to attend

And he's the only one on his team with nice enough clothes to reasonably pass as a noble, which means he can leave everyone else behind and get one-on-one time with Spirit

Meanwhile, Spirit is Not Having a Good Time Right Now

He and Zelda broke up a couple of years ago so (he didn't want to be the prince consort), and neither of them are really having a lot of luck getting over each other

As an honorary member of the Castle Guard and Zelda's bodyguard, he keeps on having to attend these fancy events where he has to watch other people flirt with the woman he is still deeply in love with

Needless to say, he's already in a bad mood.

With a lot of people in one room, his spirit senses are a little muddled and it's taking all his concentration just to track Zelda, but he keeps on picking up a spirit he hasn't felt in a very, very long time

A spirit that makes him feel like he's burning up

But there's so many people here that he's not sure. Plus he always thinks he senses Warriors nearby when his anxiety spikes up, so this is easy to write off as a trick of the mind

So Spirit is a bit distracted when a hand grabs his elbow and turns him around

And it's him

The captain

And Warriors knows from the start that this was going to go bad, so he immediately restrains him and pulls him into an alcove to talk

The problem is that the moment he releases Spirit so that they can converse, Spirit shouts for help

And that catches Warriors off guard so badly that Spirit manages to break free and draw his sword

And they fight

Spirit is fairly ruthless towards Warriors, so when the fight spills back into the ballroom, it ruins the whole party and the Castle Guard has to step in.

Warriors is arrested for trespassing and assault

(Spirit also smacks a treason charge on there just to be petty)

So Warriors gets thrown into the maximum security cell of the castle dungeon

The rest of Warriors's team realizes what happened and have to go get Time and the others so that they can plan a heist to rescue him

Luckily, Time and his team is already on his way back; they were told the moment they arrived at the engineer's workshop that Spirit was at the castle

Everyone has these giant heist plans for how to break Warriors out, but Time says he knows who to talk to about getting Warriors released

Everyone else is super confused, but starting to piece together that there is Something Going On Here

And you can decide from there how this pans out. What do Spirit and Warriors talk about while Warriors is arrested? How does Time's confrontation with Spirit go?

A shorter idea is that they just walk into Spirit's garage while he's there, and Spirit throws a wrench at Warriors's head

okok here's my lil matchup request 🥺💕

i'm a 19 year old bi transmasc dude, looking for either a romantic or platonic matchup, either works, whatever is easier! i'm a cancer and an INFP-T and both me and my friends say those are really accurate. crybaby things ✌️ no but literally i watched finding nemo again recently and bawled my eyes out. i'm serious 😭

in past romantic relationships i've been a bit obsessive, wanting to spend every minute around my partner even if it's just hanging out in the same room not saying a word. i would get paranoid easily from me overthinking everything, so i'd end up getting jealous and insecure.

but to be honest if someone were to let me be that possessive and like it and just reassure me it'd be amazing HOWEVER i know people don't usually work like that. such is life. so i've been working on handling things in a healthier way

i had a lot of really bad shit happen in my past and i spent too much time hating the world as a teenager to keep living my whole life in a bad mood. it was exhausting. so i started joking about everything and i'm a lot happier now for it, even though it took a lot of faking it to make it

i lead with jokes with people and keep everyone at arm's length — too many people have gotten close only to rip my heart out. so i like to crack jokes and make everyone laugh, i wouldn't be surprised if people usually classify me as the funny one. i'm content with that. i love making people happy

i like to draw, write, voice act, anything that can let me be creative. character design is one of my favorite things, making a whole character just with a couple concepts is so fun to me. i make my friends a lot of gift art, either of us together or their characters if they're an artist as well.

i also really love video games! i'm not very good at most of them myself, so i usually turn to twitch or youtube to watch other people play instead. i like watching my friends stream their games through discord too, i think it all started when me and my big brother were kids and he would let me watch him play zelda and halo and all that.

but ya i hope this is everything you need!! sorry if it's really long i talk a lot ;;;;

I match you with...

Yoosung!

Basically, you're the kind of person that gets overwhelmed with the idea that your emotions might be too much for people to handle. You think too long and hard about what could go wrong instead of letting yourself enjoy the moment and that can be what messes up everything that you've been trying to work on. So, what you genuinely need is somebody who can be there to level out your emotions and help you to live in the moment instead of thinking about what could happen or what happened before.

For that reason, that’s why your match is Yoosung. You need a relationship that is genuine and sincere. You need somebody that's going to love you for who you are without any pretense. It's easy to have a relationship with him because he doesn't have any pretenses. He doesn't think about things that you're afraid of, he thinks about the things that you've done with him and for him and how much they mean. You give so much of yourself to him that he only feels it's logical to devote himself back.

It's not even your shared interest in video games that really brings you together. It's the way that you experience emotions. It's how genuinely obsessed you can become with another person in a healthy way. It's running to be close to somebody and knowing that you can be without being afraid of it being misconstrued.

loving ur comics so much all the time wow!!! ur art is very expressive and nice colors and story telling... i like ur panelling a lot too so i was wondering if u have some tips or a thought process when u panel :D

ahh thank you so much!!! seriously it means a lot <3

as far as tips go, let me preface this by saying i am a serious comic amateur. like, not in a self deprecating way, i've just really only started making comics in the last few months. that botw comic is the first one i've ever made. to give myself a little credit, I do have a background in storyboarding and graphic design, which are both skills that help me make comics, but like, still. I'm just sort of fumbling my way through. All that to say I'm not sure how qualified I am to give advice to others about it. but under the cut is a bit about my thought process!

the main thing I focus on when I'm paneling, besides making sure everything fits on the page and aids the story compositionally, is building moments of impact. you can only have so many panels on a page so you have to use them to communicate the most important things. I REALLY like drawing expressions and it shows in the way I panel things lol.

so like here, I take two panels to show Mask's reaction because I want to build up his expression and body language slowly gathering more tension until he explodes in the last panel. that panel breaks away from the grid of the other to emphasize it.

or, in this page, I build tension by deliberately hiding War's face past the first panel, until the last page where you finally see his face and realize he's not actually hurt but annoyed and exasperated. He cares about Mask, but he's also kind of trying to play him for information. it recontextualizes the second page. For another note, size of the panel generally denotes time or importance- the moment Mask shoves War off is small because it happens in a flash, while the middle panel of the second page is wider to communicate Mask walking while talking.

for the botw comic, I deliberately have almost everything facing link's face in the last panel. It's like Zelda and the panel of the eye are looking directly at the horrible scene below

But all the text forces you to look the other direction. So it's supposed to build tension by feeling like. what are they looking at? what's so terrible? and then you finally get to it and the angle of of the sword neatly brings you from Link's face to the last textbox, and then to the second page. this comic worked beautifully in a vertical format mostly by accident lol.

Other considerations I make are, how does panel spacing influence mood? For the eyepatch comic, everything is on a pretty orderly grid with even gutters because it's a straightforward conversation. But for comics like these

it's not as clear-cut. For the Hyrule comic, I wanted it to feel like uneasy snapshots, so they're really spaced out, and a closeup of Hyrule's eyes breaks the center alignment. For the comic with First and Time, I wanted it to have this kind of airy feeling, so the panels all have a lot of room to breathe from one another, especially the last panel. There's a feeling of unresolved tension.

for some general tips: try not to overcrowd pages. this is a lesson I've been learning recently lol. 5 is a good number of panels for a single page, 6 or 7 if you can swing it. There are of course exceptions, so don't force it, but you wanna avoid clutter unless it's deliberate. I recently started doing layouts by just making one big rectangle and then cutting panels out of it, because it helps me visualize better and clip studio has tools that make it easy.

Hope some of that is helpful, and thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble! once again pls take everything i say with a grain of salt lol

Hey there, I have a friend I've been getting into DL but I don't really know how to explain the links so I was woundering what would be the best way to explain each of the links (and sequels if possible please) - Friday (Please and Thank you!)

(cracks knuckles)

ALRIGHT PEOPLE HERE WE GO, LONG POST AHEAD

THE CHAIN LINKS

Gen: The Link from Skyward Sword. Short for Genesis, which he will never ever let anyone call him by ever because he doesn't actually like it. He's generally level-headed and appreciates common sense, and gets a bit miffed when things decide to divert from said common sense. He's the group medic, not necessarily by any skill on his part, but more because the group needed a medic and he couldn't believe there wasn't one yet, so the only logical decision was to do it himself. He gets very particular about the group taking the proper amount of healing items as a result. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio and is the effective 'super-ego', if you will

Speck: The Link from Minish Cap. He's quiet, by far the most quiet, and will really only speak up if he's a) confident in what he has to say, and b) confident that it will add something worthwhile to the discussion. He has the ability to shrink via his magic hat (Ezlo) and a magical conduit shaped like a Jar that he carries around with him. Due to the bit where he's usually in the background, the fact that he has a surprisingly violent streak catches just about all his enemies off guard - for example, his favorite method of attack is shrinking down and using his size to stab his sword directly into his opponent's eardrum. Ironically, outside of a fight, he's one of the Links most likely to apologize to a flower for stepping on it

The Four: The Link(s) from Four Swords. They're the split-in-four version of the Link who drew the Sword, but due to a hive mind effect, everything they do is in unison. They're pretty quiet most of the time, due to most people finding said unison relatively unsettling, but since the Chain couldn't care less about that they're more willing to speak up every now and then. They specialize in group attacks and such, but they're terrible at being individual. The nature of their hive mind means that it's both incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly difficult to break their unison, and so most of the time they won't even bother trying. They have a little snarky side that comes out when they're stressed, and they hang out with Speck most often due to having similar introverted dispositions

Ocarina: The Link from Ocarina of Time, and one-half of the Hero(es) of Time with Mask due to time being broken and the continuum being shot. He's the younger half, even though he's in his sixteen-year-old body, and since he has the mind of a nine-year-old it makes a very odd combination. He has occasional confidence issues and a few self-worth/doubt beliefs as the result of hanging out with his older self and worrying about how he's going to successfully grow into someone so competent. He can usually be found next to his older self, or at the very least in the general vicinity of his older self, and he has a profound distaste for the necessity for secrets. Most specifically, his future, because it's literally standing right next to him and he'd really like to know if he beats Ganondorf, thanks

Mask: The Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and one-half of the Hero(es) of Time with Ocarina. He's the older half despite being in the body of a twelve-year-old, and since he's technically got the mind of an eighteen-year-old at the very least it looks very strange from the outside. He's snarky, sarcastic, and takes great joy in messing with other people, most specifically his younger self by refusing to give away future hints and claiming ~Spoilers~ every time it comes up. He carries his transformation masks and uses then whenever the situation calls for it. He can usually be found next to his younger self because he's secretly worried about shattering his own personal timeline, and he puts a lot of effort into making sure Ocarina survives whatever mess they've gotten into this time. He also puts an equal amount of effort into making sure Ocarina doesn't notice this

Dusk: The Link from Twilight Princess. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio and is the quote-unquote 'ego' - or, in othher words, he's usually the mediating force. If it's pointed out to him though, he will steadfastly deny that he's in any suited for a leadership position - which is in blatant contradiction to the fact that he's probably the most effective member of the Leader Trio. He carries the Curse Stone from Zant around his neck in a pouch and usles it to transform whenever the situation calls for it. He's also the regular soul-host for Midna, Shadow, or both, depending on the day. He's by far the most level-headed Link, taking almost everything in stride, and it takes a lot to make him lose his cool. The one surefire way to do it is to threaten someone he cares about, at which point he will waste no time completely destroying whoever was stupid enough to make said threat

RGBV: Red, Green, Blue, and Vio are the Link(s) from Four Swords Adventures, and like the Four they're the result of one Link being split into four bodies. Unlike the Four, they've retained their individuality and have four very different personalities as a result. Green is the established leader of their quad-cell, and is the most level-headed one. He's not the most patient one, but he is the one who's not afraid to do what needs to be done. Red is the most emotional one, easily excitable and absolutely willing to give hugs to anyone who asks (and a few who don't). Blue is the most aggressive one, although he mostly directs it towards his enemies. He does have a on-again-off-again rivalry of sorts with Vio, but it's never gotten beyond particularly invested sibling bickering. Vio meanwhile is the book-smarts one, or at least the one with the most strategic intelligence. He's also the best ranged fighter they have

Lore: The Link from A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, and Link's Awakening. He functions as one-third of the Leader Trio, finishing off the dynamic as the 'id'. He's by far the most unique personality, being a hyperactive chaos entity who delights in confusing people and making them question reality. He's also a polyglot, knows at least ten languages, and is constantly hunting for new ones to learn. He's easily the most experienced Link and as a result has Seen Some Stuff, but instead of being traumatized by the weirdness he decided to go in the other direction and embrace it instead. He's an absolutely terrible shot in spite of his numerous adventures, but the sheer amount of stuff he has tends to make up for it. He hasn't met a situation yet that he doesn't have an item for and he's not about to start now - although this is mostly due to his conviction that bombs are the answer to every situation

Realm: The Link from the original Legend of Zelda. He is constantly, hopelessly, chronically lost, and has absolutely no concept of where he is in relation to where everything else is. He also has a somewhat tenuous relationship with the concept of physical space, which tends to result in him getting lost in places he really should not have been able to get lost in (for example, a volcano). Regrettably this also extends to his items, which he frequently loses. In spite of this, he's one of the most cheerful and optimistic Links in the group. It takes a lot to get him into a bad mood, and given what he already goes through while maintaining a good mood, the entire Chain has yet to see him in a bad one. A side effect of getting lost so much is that his stamina is absolutely ridiculous, which makes him very good at drawing out a fight - in fact, that's more or less his specialty

Sketch: The Link from A Link Between Worlds. He has the ability to turn his body into paint and move along the walls like a living hieroglyph. Unfortunately, due to being made of watercolors when he does this, he also has a severe phobia of water as a result of the fact that he might actually die a horrifically painful death if his paint runs too much. Outside of that, he's relatively level-headed and very crafty, in the literal sense that he likes to make things. He used to be a blacksmith's apprentice before this whole Hero business got started (his specialty is metalwork). He likes things to make sense and gets a bit snarky when the universe decides to spite him by making no sense at all. He's one of the best Links at stealth, because for some reason very few people will notice the artwork on the wall and as long as he has a surface to fuse with, he can get just about anywhere

Wind: The Link from Wind Waker. He carries said Wind Waker as part of his inventory, and it lets him control the weather. He's a certified Weather Master in everything but the official certification, because he hasn't had the chance to go back and take the test yet, but the ability to throw literal tornadoes at his enemies makes him arguably one of the most dangerous Links in the group. He does prefer to hang back in a fight and hit from a distance as opposed to getting up close and personal, but that's very typical for a mage. He has an overabundance of patience, stored up from sailing for days back on his home ocean, and he'll take just about anything in stride - unless you're threatening his family, then all bets are off. He's one of the quieter Links, being more content to wait and see the results of something rather than actively participating, but this in no way means that he's not paying attention. He knows what he's capable of, is fully willing and ready to do it if necessary, and makes no excuses to the contrary

Steam: The Link from Spirit Tracks. He has the ability to see hidden things, which extends beyond his own disembodied Princess Zelda and into things like mask spirits or just plain invisible opponents. He also has a summons in the form of the Spirit Train, which he takes great pleasure in slamming into whichever villain has annoyed him. He's got a dry sort of sarcasm and he's definitely not afraid to say what he thinks. As a result of spending most of his adventure on a Train, he's easily the least physically fit of the Links and therefore tends to hang back in a fight, relying more on his summons for heavy hits or his sight ability to provide support. His previous career choice was a locomotive engineer, and as a result he and Sketch get along very well. They have regularly scheduled brainstorm sessions about what sort of gadget they should try and make this time, usually with Steam providing the math and schematics and Sketch providing the real-world experience to make it real

Shadow: The Link from a variety of games, since whenever a Shadow or Dark Link appears, that was him. He's bitingly sarcastic, could not possibly care less about the opinions of other people, and takes great joy in finding the best way to insult someone as possible. Being formed from the darker emotions of other Links, he's understandably in a poor-to-terrible mood almost all the time, although he can usually be convinced to take it out on other people. A side effect of being made of dark magic is that he can't be out in the sunlight too long - it'll start to burn him in the same way a match burns paper. As a perk though, he can manipulate his body into any shape he wants, mostly ignoring physics as he does. This makes him easily one of the most powerful Links in the group, since he doesn't take battle damage the way a physically-bodied person would and is all but immune to being stabbed. He makes for an excellent aggro target, partly because he can take anything the opponent could give, but also because he'll give it all back and then some

Oni: The Link from before Skyward Sword. Also known as the Fierce Deity. Saying that he's overpowered is a bit of an understatement, as he can take out the likes of Majora in three hits or less, but he's very unlikely to actually use his power like that. As a result of being put into a mask, he has no actual autonomy unless someone is wearing him, at which point he takes control of the body of the wearer to manifest in the real world. This lasts with no repercussions until his mask is removed, at which point Oni returns to his bindings. He has not deigned to explain how he ended up in a mask or who managed to put him there, but the loose implication points to the aftermath of the Demon War as the cause. Further information is pending. He's stoic and composed, and has yet to be truly riled up by anything that's happened. He also refuses, as a rule, to get involved with the rest of the Chain's adventures unless his presence is truly required. As the First Link Ever, and the one from whom the entire rest of the lineage has descended, Oni feels somewhat responsible for guiding the rest of the Links through their journeys - but guiding and coddling are two different things and as far as Oni is concerned, his legacies need to be able to fight their own battles

THE SEQUEL LINKS

Rune: The Link from Breath of the Wild. He has the Champion Abilities, as well as his own Quicktime specialty, and is of course concerningly amnesiac. He's quiet to the point of almost being forgettable, which is a side effect of a) spending nearly all his time in the wilderness alone with nobody to talk to, and b) having to constantly be on the alert for Guardians because nothing alerts a Guardian like a loud hylian. His inventory is nearly bottomless, and he therefore immediately becomes the group pack mule. He's also hands-down the best chef (something which makes Gen only slightly jealous)

Lux: The Link from Hyrule Warriors. He is the quietest Link, but not because of his personality - it's because he can't talk. The most vocalization he's ever going to manage is incoherent yells of effort, because anything beyond that is locked behind a psychosomatic speech block. He has not deigned to share why he has a psychosomatic speech block and at the moment it's highly doubtful he ever will. He's second only to Shadow in his sarcasm and general displeasure with the world, and the rest of the group is lucky that hylian sign only has loosely defined curse words, otherwise he'd be going off

RSE: Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are the Link(s) from Triforce Heroes. Emerald is the leader of the trio, more or less, while Ruby handles anything that might need a good smacking and Sapphire embodies the emotional core. They have a strange dynamic where they bicker with each other to hide the fact that they care, which is a direct result of them still settling into their own dynamics. They have their Totem formation, of course, and share an incredibly specific set of opinions about fashion. The fact that they also have their entire wardrobe on hand is complete coincidence, yep

Lyric: The Link from Cadence of Hyrule. He can hear the Universe Music better than any other Link (with the possible exception of Wind) and he will do whatever he can to follow its lead. He's constantly moving to the beat in almost everything he does, and it makes him unexpectedly deadly in a fight. It turns out that following the Universe Music gives very good buffs and Lyric is a master at following the music. Ironically enough for all his sense of rhythm, he cannot sing to save his life and is in fact instrumentally challenged, which annoys him to no end

THE OC LINKS

Codex: The Link from the Evil Overlord List, a story I write that somehow developed its own protagonist. He's snarky, sarcastic, runs on caffeine and spite, and will probably take over the world someday if he ever gets around to it. He's currently just a college student writing his thesis paper (The List), but once he graduates the world had better brace itself

Wraith: The Link that was made as a result of a random conversation one day, in which someone asked me what would happen if Demise won permanently. Five minutes with my angst-stunted brain later, I had a cheerful sunshine child who had the ability to see spirits and was getting mentored by all eighteen dead Heroes as the backup plan to deal with Demise. He's way too pure for the world and probably shouldn't be as big an optimist as he is for someone surrounded by dead people

are there any stories/facts about your job/coworkers you can comfortably share? maybe something cool they did/you did with them recently? anyone that stands out in particular among them, without getting too specific for. clear reasons?

what's cheeseburger up to atm? any notable stories or anything about him recently, or has he been just living his best life as usual?

which of the skyloft NPCs do you particularly like? for arguments sake, this is excluding the more story relevant ones, so no groose + his gang, no zelda obviously, etc.

as an opposite to that, talk about groose! i've always loved him as a character, and the bits you've said about him and his relationship with link and zelda is always great! also, any notable kin memories you have of groose? especially things that occured after he left skyloft, or even after the demise fight. what did he get up to after the credits rolled?

fun stories about your loftwing? were there any traits you and him shared notably? or any that were more opposite?

what are some of your favorite things about your favorite iterations of zelda? what i mean by that is like... what do you like best about tetra/wind waker zelda? what about skyward zelda? botw zelda? they're similar but all unique people, so what endears you the most about each of them?

i know this is a lot, so don't feel like you have to answer in any specific time frame. take as long as is comfortable, and i hope this helps!! ~🍄

these are so many!!! thank you for being so generous!!!

are there any stories/facts about your job/coworkers you can comfortably share? maybe something cool they did/you did with them recently? anyone that stands out in particular among them, without getting too specific for. clear reasons?

most of the ppl i work w are. kinda rude to me all the time so i mostly just drown them out so i don’t go insane. but there is this one kid who is just, like, a ray of sunshine every time he walks into a room. and he works so hard and he cares about his work and i feel like he’s the only bitch who gets me. we vibe over zelda and will just get into debates about the lore on the clock and i look forward to seeing him a lot. 

what's cheeseburger up to atm? any notable stories or anything about him recently, or has he been just living his best life as usual?

he’s just doin he. he sleeps a lot. sometimes in boxes. sometimes under beds. sometimes directly on top of me.

a few weeks back i went to the ER for what i figured out was a kidney stone and while i was literally on my bed writhing in pain trying to hold out until my grandparents got there cheeseburger just like, jumped up on top of me and immediately starting pissing on me, as if to say haha, check this out. i can urinate better than you.

which of the skyloft NPCs do you particularly like? for arguments sake, this is excluding the more story relevant ones, so no groose + his gang, no zelda obviously, etc.

i love all of them so much oh no... everyone i love i love for kinnie reasons like i am tempted to say jakamar cause even though he’s kind of a sleazy dude he, as previously mentioned, smuggled me woodscraps to whittle fsdgjkfsgh

but parrow gives good hugs. and henya always has snacks hidden somewhere. and pumm will give you soup on the house sometimes if he can tell you’re in a rough mood. and and and........ i wuv skyloft. this is all kinnie bullshit actually.

as an opposite to that, talk about groose! i've always loved him as a character, and the bits you've said about him and his relationship with link and zelda is always great! also, any notable kin memories you have of groose? especially things that occured after he left skyloft, or even after the demise fight. what did he get up to after the credits rolled?

talked about him a lil bit in my last ask hehe

fun stories about your loftwing? were there any traits you and him shared notably? or any that were more opposite?

aepon & i were the kind of pair where we seemed really dissimilar on the surface but i think if anyone actually knew us they’d be able to discern pretty quickly that we were 100% twinning. like at face value i was a pretty calm and quiet person who was just, like. spacey and sleepy and vibing while things happened around me, and aepon was this absolute speed demon who had the biggest, loudest presence any time he entered a space. ppl in skyloft called him my red terror.

but the thing about my bird is that he was stubborn to a fault, and recklessly brave, and he just didn’t. stop. and he loved fiercely, the second i was awake in the morning i’d hear him circling overhead and shrieking his happy little shriek, he’d fill my head with all his thoughts of hanging out with me while i was trying to concentrate on work. all those things, we had in common, but i wouldn’t have been able to tell you that. someone like zelda probably would have. 

i think the best representation of it is at the beginning of everything when the tornado took zelda, the both of us just. dove right in. nothing else mattered, no conflict existed within either of us, i didn’t have to steer him in or send my intentions into our shared headspace, he just turned into an arrow flying straight into danger, and i went with him and we were one living being. like that’s our core. we are very opposite, until shit gets real, and then we are this beautiful unity tearing through the clouds. 

what are some of your favorite things about your favorite iterations of zelda? what i mean by that is like... what do you like best about tetra/wind waker zelda? what about skyward zelda? botw zelda? they're similar but all unique people, so what endears you the most about each of them?

HOW DO I COUNT THE WAYS I LOVE ZELDA AHHHHH

oot!zelda’s determination to defy fate... the way she refuses, from the start, to give in to darkness even though she’s only a little girl. the way she sees my commoner ass just waltz up into her private garden after breaking into her house still dressed in my stupid forest clothes and shes like. oh fuck yeah, wanna help me overthrow the gerudo king? and we’re, can’t stress this enough, ten. she’s so confident like she never worries about being powerless or out of her element, she never for a second believes this isn’t something she can fight. and when everything goes to shit she just keeps fighting!!! and still has the time to remind me that i can keep fighting too!!! literally where did she get that personality i love her so much!!!!

tetra’s fucking... simmering fire. her perfect balance between action and thought. like you can tell she’s pissed off and wants to start throwing punches but she always has the self-control to assess if it’s the thing to do in the moment. I CAN’T DO THAT!!! i’m pissed off i want to swords!!!! that motherfucker over there is PROVOKING ME!!!!! and tetra has the same fire inside her but she’s always just, like, “shut the fuck up, link. put your sword away. we need to get the jump on him.” and im like, AHHHHHHH because she’s always right. literally always. i don’t know how she does this but i think about it constantly. i love her level head and her scheming heart and her choice to carve her own destiny. i like how she finds out she’s a legendary princess from an age long past with sacred blood and shes just like ‘that’s cool but actually i’m tetra and i like to cuss and steal.’ and just does that forever. it resonates with me especially because even though the gods acknowledged me as the hero of winds i, like, wasn’t a ‘true’ incarnation of the hero. it’s just what i decided to be with what i was given. she and i are two sides of that coin and there is something beautiful abt that i don’t have words for. in a lot of ways she was my inspiration.

skyward!zelda’s um. everything? everything. i am so in love with her. i am so in love... with her. i am finding it harder to describe her than everyone else here which is so silly because she’s easily the person i was closest with. she’s just, like, made of fire and love? of passion. everything she is stems from what she loves--she loves old legends, and cliche romance stories, and stargazing, and going on adventures. zelda romanticizes everything in her life, she’ll stop mid-sentence to make you look at the sky because it struck her as particularly beautiful today, meanwhile i’m just like. thats the sky i see it every day i live here. and she’s so brave, so fierce, so resilient--there’s literally nothing that could scare her, i’m certain she got to the surface and immediately started spitting curses at blins, if ghirahim had actually found her alone she would have tried to come at him clawing and spitting. i was always so chill because all my anger was Stored in The Zelda, she’d just fight half my battles for me before i could register they were battles. idk. zelda was such an optimist who took everything in stride and believed, no matter what, that she could make it her own and make it beautiful and find something to adore within it. i might have had a quieter disposition, but she was always better at dealing with change than me. it was calming. i love her so much.

botw!zelda’s passion and inquisitive heart, oh my god, oh my god. i’m going to fucking fight everyone in the kingdom who ever made her feel like she talks too much. god it enthralls me, the way she just talks and talks and talks and LETS ME LISTEN, she lets me just SIT THERE and BASK IN IT like some kind of COLD REPTILE ON A ROCK. i literally cannot comprehend how she can fit so much knowledge about so many different things in her brain, and the way she’s ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT, literally just getting together with her techie friends and building whole ass machines when she was like 6 years old. shes looking at me like ‘oh this child prodigy curse my shortcomings why cant i be pulling enchanted swords when IM 12′ and im like PRINCESS YOU’RE FUCKING COOLER THAN ME LIKE CONGRATS I TOUCH A SWORD SOMETIMES AND YOU COULD LITERALLY MAKE A ROBOT TO DO THAT FOR YOU oh my god the way she doesn’t see how incredible she is makes me go insane i feel insane just thinking about it she’s the coolest fucking person i’ve ever met she’s the coolest person in hyrule the kingdom is too good for her i want her to take apart hyrule castle brick by brick and just leave a note behind that says ‘im too cool for you’ and then she gets on my ancient magic motorcycle and rides off into the sunset to some paradise far away and if i’m LUCKY she takes me with her. i love zelda

Another anon here! Just wondering if there are any soundtracks you like which have a particularly villainous theme or sound to it? Or romantic? Any favorites? I just love music which have a specific mood pertained to it, as opposed to just like... all the "heroic" music which all sound the same at this point tbh. I've been listening to the zelda stuff a lot too btw! pretty epic. :)

ohhh, let me think. fair warning, 98% of these will be from various dragon age games. i’ll leave out zelda stuff because you said you’ve been listening to it already! god, you really can tell i’ve spent the last few years of my life writing fantasy kjnfdjg

OH do i have a song for a villainous theme. the dark solas theme from inquisition’s trespasser dlc is what i write nearly all high tension/villain-related scenes to. it’s fast-paced and intense and really works for setting a villainous mood, at least in my mind.

(speaking of high tension/fight scenes, silver for monsters and for honor! for toussaint! from the witcher 3 ost are both some of my go-to options)

freedom’s progress from the mass effect 2 soundtrack can also be used for a relatively villainous theme. it has a darker mood and a sense of danger that work really well together.

the descent theme is the song i finished sevensworn to. it’s one of my all time favorites in terms of soundtracks, which is unsurprising seeing as dragon age is one of my favorite franchises. it’s got a darker sense of heroism and the feeling of going up against something impossible. it has wonderful pacing, it’s catchy, and it’s memorable.

light of the seven from game of thrones, which i…have not read or seen since middle school. this is another song i had on repeat while writing the end of sevensworn, actually - it’s name is rather fitting for that, i’m realizing. it has a feeling of apprehension/desolation that i really love.

exploring the winter palace, also from inquisition. it’s a song i play when i want a relatively calm/darkly curious ambiance that still has plenty of character.

the dawn will come (bioware hire me to hype people up about dragon age because that’s really all i’m doing right now) is a song i go to when setting a cautiously hopeful scene. it’s not what i’d call heroic, though i suppose it could be seen as such. to me it feels a bit more like the song you sing when you’re going up against impossible odds.

the last of us main theme is the EPITOME of a song that conveys a growing sense of hope vs desolate loneliness. this song has such a clear mood and puts it forth so well. 

those are the ones that have various distinct moods to me, but if you’d like me to try to find specifics i’d be happy to! i’m always down to provide questionable music suggestions :’)